Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Renny couldn’t decide what woke her. Was it the burning pain in her side, the throbbing pain in her thigh, or the dull ache in her head? Or maybe it was the sound of voices drifting quietly to her from someplace nearby. Whatever had done it, she wished it would go fuck itself. She’d rather stay asleep.

“I think she’s coming around.” A female voice, unfamiliar but nonthreatening, sounded as though it had come from a couple of feet above and behind her. That confused her. She had the feeling she’d been expecting to wake to the sound of male voices, and unfriendly ones at that.

Where was she?

Memories came flooding back. Being chased. Driving. Running out of gas. Fleeing through an unfamiliar forest.

Mud and snow.

Bryce.

Pain.

Gunfire.

She jerked into full consciousness, and the instinctive tightening of her muscles made her gasp at the sudden rush of pain. Damn it, everything hurt.

She opened her eyes and found herself blinking up at four strange faces. Three large men loomed above her, while a woman hovered a few feet below them. It took a second for her fuzzy brain to put together the fact that she was lying on someone’s sofa with three male shifters staring down at her and a female perched on the edge of a coffee table at her left. Instinct made her wary, but she had to admit it beat waking up to find herself surrounded by Bryce and his Merry Morons.

She tried to shift herself a bit more upright but winced and quickly abandoned the idea. Instead, she tried a tentative smile. “Um, hi?”

“Hey there.” The woman leaned forward, her smile casual, utterly genuine, and naturally kind. “Welcome back to the land of the living. How are you feeling?”

Renny focused on her. Compared with the wall of males ringing them, the woman looked tiny. It was hard to tell while she was sitting, but she likely fell somewhere around dead average in height, maybe five four, and built with the kind of softly curved muscles common to cheerleaders and college softball players. The woman had dark blondish hair with a few intriguing shades of red and brown streaking through it. She looked normal and safe and genuinely concerned about Renny’s condition.

“I’m good. I mean, I’m sore,” Renny corrected herself, “and I feel like I got rolled around inside a cement truck full of rusty nails for a few hours, but I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”

One hand instinctively went to her side where a wound continued to ache and burn. She might have worried about it more if she hadn’t noticed just then that she seemed to be stark naked and covered by nothing more than a cotton blanket. She flushed and drew it a little higher around her shoulders. Shifters might not have a lot of hang-ups about nudity, but there was getting naked for a few seconds before and after changing shapes, and then there was lying naked on an unfamiliar sofa in front of three strange men.

The woman, who smelled feline to Renny, noticed the movement and grinned, but she didn’t comment. Instead, she said, “You will be fine. I promise. I’m an EMT, and I gave you a check before I bandaged you up. You’re suffering from some signs of exhaustion—the unconsciousness being one of them—and those wounds are going to take a few days to completely heal, but I don’t think there will be any permanent damage. Just take it easy for a day or two, and you should be back to normal before you know it.”

Renny resisted commenting that “normal” would take a bit more work for her than for the average wolf about town. “Thanks. I really am grateful for the help. I owe you one.”

The woman shook her head. “Just doing my job, ma’am.”

“Renny. Renny Landry.” Deciding that waving would upset her blanket coverage, she just waggled her fingers above the hem in an abbreviated greeting. “And even so, I do owe you.” She glanced around at the other figures in the room until her gaze hit on the only one who looked vaguely familiar. “And you. You’re the one who drove off Bryce and the others. Thank you. You saved my life.”

The man standing at the far end of the sofa had his legs braced wide and his broad shoulders back. Put him in an eye patch and a billowing shirt and she’d have said the man carried himself like a pirate. He had his large hands cupped around a heavy mug of what smelled like coffee and held the drink low against a belly that looked intriguingly firm and sculpted.

Overall, he exuded an attitude so confident and masculine that Renny wondered if it had to shave by the end of the day. Everything about this man screamed alpha to her, and his scent clearly identified him as the wolf who lived in this house.

He had dark hair cut close around the sides but left a little longer on top. Dark sideburns framed blade-sharp cheekbones and only emphasized the dark stubble covering his chin. Either he did have to shave twice a day, or he hadn’t bothered with a razor in at least a week.

His skin had a dusky quality she associated with time outdoors. Not sunbathing or barbecuing, but living and working in the open air. Either that, or the Goddess had just blessed him with a complexion like golden honey.

His eyes looked dark, but she couldn’t quite make out the color across the distance separating them. Or maybe she was just distracted by all the other colors he sported. Despite the chill she could feel around the edges of her blanket, the wolf wore a shirt with no arms, revealing the two full-sleeve tattoos decorating him from shoulders to wrists.

Elaborate, intricate, and boldly beautiful, the shades of red and green and blue and purple twined across the sleek, strong muscles of an athlete. The body art and the chiseled build gave him the look of a rock star or a biker. Definitely the kind of man who could hold his own in a fight. The scar cutting across his forehead and bisecting his left eyebrow didn’t exactly hurt that impression, either.

He watched her with those dark eyes, his expression blank but his gaze intense, until Renny wanted to squirm. She realized she’d been staring for at least a minute or two and felt heat surge into her cheeks.

“Um, anyway, I’m grateful.” She stumbled over the words and cursed her own tongue for working against her. When the wolf said nothing, she glanced nervously to the other two men in the room.

The one to the wolf’s left stood a little over six feet tall and held himself with the kind of lazy, coiled tension of a cat shifter. A few sniffs made her think he might be a mountain lion in his other shape. It would make sense with the tawny gold of his skin and the black-streaked sandy shade of his hair. His eyes looked like the dark green of tree moss, and his chiseled features bore the lines of a man who smiled often. He wasn’t smiling now, though. He watched Renny with a carefully neutral expression and a feline intensity.

Standing between the mountain lion and the other woman in the room, the largest of the males didn’t bother keeping his expression neutral. He stared down at Renny with open curiosity edging toward suspicion. The dark navy of his sheriff’s uniform might explain that, and the striking resemblance between his features and the EMT’s added weight to the idea that this man was a cop to his bones—protective and inclined toward caution around strangers.

Probably especially around strangers who’d been hunted by other shifters.

He had short hair in an interesting mix of shades from ashy blond to copper gold to chocolaty brown all tumbled together. He looked like the kind of man who cut it to keep it under control, but the strategy failed him. It stood up in tousled disarray, as if he’d been running his fingers through it, or as if he’d rolled out of bed without so much as looking near a comb. It softened the impression of a granite jaw and furrowed brow. Well, maybe a little. His scent told her she could subtract the mountain from his shifter identity. This was a lion-lion, if she’d ever smelled one.

“I’m Molly Buchanan,” the female said, shooting the male beside her a pointed glance. “And we were glad to help. Do you mind me asking what happened, though? Mick said you were chased onto his property by coyotes.”

Renny stole a glance at the wolf, whose expression didn’t change. He continued to brood in her general direction. “Yeah, it’s kind of a long story.”

“Like Molly said, you’ll need a couple of days to heal.” The mountain lion gave her a look that expressed both humor and insistence. He’d get the story from her one way or another, but he was willing to be entertained by it. Or so Renny hoped. “My name’s John Jaeger, by the way. You can consider me all ears.”

The lion scowled at his compatriot and turned a stern face to Renny. “What the mayor means, is that you were attacked within the jurisdiction of the town, so we need to know if there’s any continuing threat from the folks who did this to you.”

Renny felt her pulse jump. “The mayor? Of where?”

“Alpha, Washington.”

“Oh, wow,” she breathed. “I can’t believe I made it.”

“Made it?” The deputy stiffened at her words. “You mean you were heading to Alpha when you were attacked?”

Renny clutched her blanket and shifted into more of a seated position, wincing when the movement pulled at her wounds. “I was headed to town when my car ran out of gas. I knew the coyotes were following me, so I took off into the woods hoping to lose them. I hoped I was still going in the right direction on foot, but I couldn’t be a hundred percent certain. And I was a little preoccupied.”

“Why were they following you?” he demanded in a harsh tone.

“Zeke, quit it,” Molly scolded. “Does it matter why? They chased her through the woods and seriously injured her. Can you think of a reason why she’d deserve something like that?”

“Maybe she committed some kind of crime against their pack,” the lion grumbled, but he looked uncomfortable as he said it. Most shifter communities had their own form of justice, and hunting parties did occasionally pursue fugitives who tried to escape it. But several coyotes against a lone female wolf didn’t paint a very pretty picture.

“Maybe you’re an idiot,” Molly shot back. “Forgive my brother, Renny. Sometimes I think he wears that uniform a little too tight.”

Renny appreciated the lioness’s reassurance, but she understood where the man was coming from. “No, it’s okay. He’s with law enforcement, so he’s responsible for people’s safety around here. The mayor, too. They have a right to ask if I’m a danger to their community.” She looked both men in the eyes. “I’m not, though. I promise. The coyotes who attacked me were working for someone else. Their alpha. He’s … well, he’s been … following me.”

“Following you? Following you where?”

Renny laughed. It had become a habit, because if she didn’t laugh, she’d have to scream, and that scared people. “Everywhere. To work. From work. To and from the store, the doctor’s office, the post office, friends’ houses. Everywhere. I quit my job, I left town. Hell, I left the state, and he just sent his pals after me.”

Molly frowned. “That’s not being followed, Renny; that’s being stalked.”

Mick had to grab his wolf by the scruff to keep it from jumping straight out of his skin. It wanted to feel some coyote throat under its teeth, and it wanted to start now. The she-wolf had a stalker?

Fuck. That.

He heard a click and looked down to see his own claws tapping the side of his coffee mug. He set it down before he cracked it and willed his human nails back.

“Whoa.” Zeke held up a hand. “That’s a serious accusation, Moll. You might not want to put words into Ms. Landry’s mouth.”

The she-wolf shook her head. “She isn’t. I’ve used the term myself. It fits.”

“Women are usually stalked by men they’ve had relationships with in the past. Is this guy an ex of yours?”

Mick’s wolf rumbled its displeasure.

“Absolutely not.” Her mouth firmed as she said it, her eyes flashing. “I never wanted anything to do with him, but right from the beginning, he refused to take no for an answer.”

“Hey, guys, hang on a minute, would you?” Molly pushed to her feet and still had to look up to glare at the men. “You’re questioning Renny like she’s suspected of something while she’s sitting here wounded, naked, and probably in desperate need of some Advil and a glass of water. Can you maybe give her a break and, I don’t know, a T-shirt or something, before you make with the Inquisition routine?”

Immediately—and predictably—three pairs of male eyes focused all their attention on the woman in question. Since Mick’s were one of them, he understood the instinctive response to the possibility of spotting something yummy, but his wolf failed to sympathize. It suggested he shift and let it eat the eyeballs of the other men before they got a peek.

He channeled the urge into motion. “I’ll get her something to wear.”

The others continued their discussion as he stalked down the short hall to his bedroom. Thanks to his shifter hearing, he didn’t even need to strain to keep track of their words.

“That’s a start, anyway. And you.” From the way she emphasized the pronoun, the lioness could only be referring to her brother. “Go get her some water. I’ve got meds in my kit. There’s no reason she should be naked or in pain while you guys break out the rubber hoses.”

“But, Molly, we figured the interrogation light would keep her warm,” Jaeger teased. “And the waterboarding would wash the rest of that blood and dirt right off her.”

“Very funny, Mr. Mayor, but I notice you seemed perfectly happy to let my brother give Renny the third degree.”

“He was doing his job.”

Jaeger’s words overlapped with the softer tones of the she-wolf, and Mick’s wolf did not like the way their tones blended or the soft chuckle they shared when they realized they’d responded in unison. He grabbed a long-sleeved shirt from his closet and started back to the living room before they could get any cozier. Then he thought better of it and turned back to add a comfortable old T-shirt, a pair of sweatpants with a drawstring waist, and his thickest socks to the pile of fabric.

Layers. Layers would keep her (covered) warm.

He returned to the other room to find the wolf accepting some tablets and a drink from Molly’s hands.

“Here.” He thrust the clothing toward her. “You can change in the bathroom. First door on the right.”

She looked up, and for the first time he got a good look at her eyes. They were wide and soft and the color of green tea, a pale shade with almost tawny undertones. Beth’s eyes had been brown, like sweet milk chocolate.

Molly intercepted the clothing and stepped protectively toward the injured woman. “Come on. I’ll help you up. You just hang on to the blanket. I’ll give you some privacy, but I’ll be right outside the door if you need me, okay?”

Mick’s wolf huffed a reluctant approval in his head. It would prefer to be the one picking their mate up off the sofa, but at least it wasn’t one of the males trying to touch her—

Shit.

He winced and smacked the animal back. They didn’t have a mate. Not anymore. Beth was dead.

“I’m sure I’ll be fine,” Renny protested as she leaned on the other woman and made her slow, stiff way toward the bathroom.

“And I’m sure that I’m the EMT here. You’re injured, and you were unconscious for almost an hour. I don’t take chances with my patients.”

When the door closed behind her, sealing Renny in the bathroom alone, Zeke turned toward the others and kept his voice low. “If what she says is true, I doubt tonight will be the end of it. Stalkers don’t give up easily, especially not ones willing to follow their victims across state lines and involve proxies in the stalking behavior. That’s some serious shit.”

“Agreed.” Jaeger angled his body slightly away from the deputy, the move subtle but deliberate. It didn’t take more than a glance back at Molly’s crossed arms and fierce scowl in her brother’s direction to explain it. Or for Mick to follow the mayor’s example out of the direct line of fire between the siblings.

“Then you realize that by coming here, that girl has brought her problems right onto our doorstep,” Zeke said. He wore a grim look, the one Mick called his cop face. “If she stays in Alpha, they could spill over onto our residents.”

Jaeger didn’t look much happier than Zeke, but he shrugged. “And what’s the alternative? We get her gas tank filled up and send her on her way? Tell ourselves it’s not our problem? I can’t do that, and I doubt you could, either.”

“What if someone else gets hurt?”

“Then we have twice as many reasons to make it clear to some coyotes that just because Alpha takes in shifters with problems doesn’t mean that assholes get a free pass,” Jaeger said. “I’m not going to turn the girl away.”

Zeke frowned. “I’m not saying we shove her out the door with our boots on her ass. I’m just saying we need to know more about her situation before we commit ourselves to getting in any deeper.”

“Zee, we’re in. Deal with it.”

Mick’s wolf agreed, both with protecting the female and with kicking coyote ass. It thought the mayor had the right idea.

The click of the door opening drew his attention, and he watched as Renny emerged from the bathroom with the blanket draped over her arm and the rest of her fully covered. He experienced a surge of satisfaction at seeing her in his clothing, as huge as it was on her. The sight made his possessive wolf nearly purr like a house cat. It wanted to get closer to see if she smelled like them now, if the lingering scent of their clean laundry would be enough to mark her as theirs.

Fuck. Not ours. She’snot ours, he snarled.

His wolf ignored him.

She padded back toward the living room, her sock-clad feet silent on the wooden floors. “Thank you again,” she said, laying the blanket down over the arm of the sofa. “I have a feeling I’m going to keep saying that a lot tonight, but I mean it every time.”

Mick managed a curt nod while his wolf kept trying to sniff her. It wasn’t even being discreet about it, the fucker.

“You’re very welcome,” Jaeger said, giving him an odd look, but stepping naturally into the role of gracious host. “Why don’t you sit down, Ms. Landry. You’ve been through a lot tonight. And, I suspect, for well before that.”

Renny sank down onto the edge of the sofa and rubbed her hands over her face. It looked pale and bruised, but clean, as if she’d washed up before she dressed. She’d also done something to tie her disheveled hair back from her face, and when she turned her head to look around the room he thought he saw a strand of unwaxed dental floss wrapped around the auburn strands.

“Yes, about that.” She placed her palms flat against her knees and licked her lips as if she were nervous. “I realized while I was getting dressed that I probably haven’t made much sense to anyone since I woke up, so I figured that in addition to my thanks, I owe all of you an explanation. It’s a long and not very pretty story, but I’ll try to stick to the CliffsNotes version.”

Molly returned with another glass of water and set it on the coffee table in front of the she-wolf. “Only if you want, Renny. I still think you need more rest.”

“No, you guys have helped a stranger who showed up at your door with someone trying to kill her. You could have just let the coyotes have me. Like the deputy said, I could have deserved to have them hunting me. You had no way of knowing. But if I plan to stick around, you all need to know what’s going on. What kind of trouble I might be causing.”

Her voice grew stronger as she spoke, as if she’d begun to calm and relax into more the kind of person she was when she wasn’t running for her life or waking up with serious injuries. After a sip of water, she continued.

“So, here’s the gist of it. About two years ago, I took a job at a small public library in Northern California. I grew up farther south, but this was a chance to run a library all by myself. At my age, it seemed like such an amazing opportunity.”

Jaeger looked bemused. “You mean, you’re a librarian?”

She nodded. “I have my master’s degree in library and information sciences, but I’m young. I’m twenty-six, and I’ve only been out of school for a couple of years. I thought I’d be a junior reference librarian for at least another two or three years, and not running my own facility for at least a decade, so I jumped at this chance.”

Mick tried to blame his wolf for the images that flashed in his head as he listened to her story. Unfortunately, he didn’t think he could pin the fantasies about horn-rimmed glasses and tight gray skirts solely on the animal. That came straight from the human side of his brain.

“What I didn’t know was that the reason the town needed a librarian so desperately was because the last one had been killed during a coyote takeover of the town.” She grimaced. “Apparently, the wolf pack that had controlled the area for decades imploded a few years ago, leaving a shifter power vacuum in town. For a while, that made it appeal to a variety of Others who prefer not to have strong pack control. But eventually, the coyotes moved in and took over. That made some of the locals pretty unhappy, and a war broke out. The former librarian—an ocelot, I think—was one of the casualties. This all happened before I got there, though, and the coyotes were careful to keep all that buried until I had already settled into the job.”

“Oh, shit,” Molly said. “Everything wasn’t quite as peaceful as it seemed, was it.”

Renny snorted. “Not by a long shot. The coyotes kept everything looking pretty on the surface, but I found out fast that the alpha ruled through fear and violence. Anyone who stood against him mysteriously disappeared, and sometimes their families, as well. It was like he’d set up this weird little psycho kingdom where everything and everyone belonged to him, and no one was allowed to protest.” She rubbed her hands against the thighs of her borrowed sweatpants and chewed on her bottom lip. “I certainly wasn’t allowed to turn him down when he decided to ask me out.”

Mick felt his lip curl in a snarl and tightened the muscles around his mouth. His wolf had to stop acting like White Fang every time anyone so much as hinted at Renny being with another male. It was getting ridiculous.

“Anyway, I didn’t take it seriously at first, but the longer I was there, the more I learned about the town, the more nervous it made me that he wasn’t giving up on trying to make me date him. I had realized by then that telling him off might backfire, so I tried just brushing him off, pretending I didn’t know what he was getting at, but that just made him escalate. That’s when the stalking started. At that point, I knew I had to just get away, so I quit my job and left town. I didn’t even have anything else lined up. I just had to get out of there.”

She paused again for more water. Molly, now seated beside her on the sofa, leaned closer to pat her shoulder. “Of course you did. You’d have been crazy to stay.”

“Well, leaving made him crazy,” Renny said, her mouth turning down as she related the story. “He actually followed me to the next town I went to. Just showed up at my door, out of the blue, like I’d never left. Like I’d never said no. That just plain scared me, so I ran.”

She plucked at the fabric of the shirt she wore, the hem pooling in her lap because it was so big on her.

“That was two months ago. Every time I changed my location, either he found me or his buddies did. Once he sent them after me, I knew things had changed. He wasn’t acting like just a guy who was interested in me anymore; it was as if we had actually been in a relationship that he expected us to continue. Like I was his long-term partner, and we’d just had a fight, or something. It got really weird.”

Molly shuddered. “Creepy.”

“Very. A couple of times, his goons almost got me, and it became clear he had ordered them to bring me back to him, no matter what. I managed to escape and run again, but they found me about a week ago near Eugene, Oregon. I’ve been trying to stay ahead of them ever since.”

The men had remained quiet while Renny told her story, just listening while she explained herself. Or at least, Mick assumed that’s what the other two had been doing. He had been trying to keep himself from interrupting to demand a name, location, and recent photo of this dead coyote walking, while his wolf had been trying to break free of his control and get started on the hunt already. Somehow he didn’t think she needed to witness any more physical violence tonight.

Zeke remained standing, but Jaeger had taken a seat in Mick’s favorite armchair. He looked like a judge hearing arguments or a feudal lord hearing petitions, his expression focused and serious as he listened.

“You mentioned earlier that you were headed to Alpha when your car ran out of gas,” the mayor said. “What made you decide to come here?”

She sighed. “Their newest tactic. Lately, every place I stop in seems to suffer from an outbreak of antishifter sentiment as soon as I get there. The first couple of times, I figured it was just a symptom of the current climate.”

“Sure.” Molly nodded. “We’ve all seen on the news how human-nationalists have been getting bolder over the past year or two.”

“Yeah, but that’s mostly in big cities or superconservative areas of the country. Not in liberal areas like the Pacific Northwest. And not as soon as I settle into a place.”

Jaeger steepled his fingers under his chin. “You think your stalker has been stirring up human radicals just to target you?”

“I’d be skeptical, too, but he basically admitted it the last time I spoke to him.”

“You talk to him?” Zeke sounded incredulous.

“Not voluntarily, but he finds ways to find my phone number, or if he gets really frustrated, he’ll join the others in the hunt for a few days. And the last time, he said I should just realize that there’s no place I can hide from him, that I’ll never be safe among humans, and no lupine pack will ever accept me if I don’t put down roots with them. Which I can’t do with him always after me.”

Mick knew she was right about the last part. Wolf shifter packs could be insular, suspicious little clans, loath to accept outsiders. Lone females usually fared better than males at gaining acceptance into unrelated packs, but most had to go through phases of testing before becoming members. If Renny had been on the run, never really able to settle in any one place, she wouldn’t have had a chance to earn the trust of a pack. That meant she’d be unwelcome in pack territory.

Shunned by other wolf shifters and faced with a climate of hostility from humans, she must have felt like she literally had nowhere to go.

“He had me backed into a corner,” Renny said. “And that’s when I thought of Alpha.” She looked straight at the mayor. “Every shifter knows about this place. It’s like our version of a bedtime story—the place where different species of shifters live together in a single territory, without packs or prides, and look out for each other. We’re safe if the anti-Other sentiment continues to build, because shifters founded the town and still run it. And any shifter is welcome, as long as they obey the law. Alpha doesn’t turn shifters away, even the ones with issues.”

She shifted her gaze in turn to each of the people in the room, her expression earnest. “I’m tired of running. I want to build a life, but I can’t do it around humans. Not only is it not safe for me, but it wouldn’t be safe for them. The coyotes could decide to hurt them, either to get to me or in an effort to turn them against me. And this is the only place where other shifters would welcome a stranger with my kind of baggage.”

Mick’s wolf wanted to welcome her in a graphic way. Then as soon as it had that taken care of, he wanted to hunt down the bastard stalker who had been making her miserable and end him in as bloody and violent as way as he could think of.

Neither Jaeger nor Zeke responded right away. They exchanged meaningful glances, seeming to communicate silently until Molly gave an exasperated huff.

“Oh, give it a rest, you two,” she grumped. “You know she’s being perfectly honest with you. Nothing about her story smelled like a lie, and we all know that situations like hers might not be the reason Alpha was founded, but it’s still a damn compelling argument for coming here. We do take care of our own, and we are more capable than any other town out there of defending ourselves if any of the threats to Renny spill over. Give her a break already, and tell her how we’re going to deal with this.”

“Now, hold on a minute,” Renny protested, her eyes widening. “I’m not asking anyone else to ‘deal with’ my problems for me. This is my mess and my responsibility. All I’m looking for is a place where he can’t drive me away and where there are authorities who can handle a shifter if I need to call for help. That’s it. Frankly, I’m hoping that once he realizes where I’ve gone, he’ll finally understand that I’m not worth the trouble he’d cause by continuing to harass me.”

“I wouldn’t hold my breath,” Zeke grumbled. With his arms crossed over his chest and his cop face on, he looked like he could stop a whole pack of coyotes. He just didn’t look like he wanted to. “Stalkers who become this obsessive rarely just give up and go away. Either they get what they’re after, or they go to jail. End of story.”

Molly’s foot darted out, landing a solid kick to her brother’s shin. “Shut up, you jerk. Way to go with being welcoming and reassuring.”

“Hey, I’m just being honest.” The deputy held up his hands. “It won’t help anyone if we don’t look at the situation clearly. If Ms. Landry stays in town, her stalker will show up here eventually. We all need to be prepared for that.”

“Renny,” the she-wolf insisted. “And I will be staying, unless you tell me I need to leave.”

“No.” The growl escaped Mick’s throat before he could stop it. Jaeger’s knowing look made him want to unleash another one. He cleared his throat with a cough. “No one can run forever. No one should have to. If she’s decided to make a stand here, she’s got every right to do it.”

Plus, his wolf whined, if she left, they’d just have to chase after her. They wouldn’t survive losing another mate.

Not. Our. Mate.

The wolf ignored him. Again.

“She does,” Jaeger said, putting an end to the debate. He rose from his chair and offered Renny a smile. “Welcome to Alpha, Ms. Landry.”

“Renny.”

“Renny,” he conceded. “You’ll find out fast enough that we’re not some kind of fairy-tale paradise. Some of us can be real assholes, given the chance, but we do guard each other’s backs.” He rubbed his hands together in a brisk, businesslike gesture. “Now, let’s get practical for a second. It’s going to be dawn in another hour or so, but it seems like a cruel thing to wake up the owner of the B and B at this point to get you checked in. We don’t have a motel in town, but I assume you’ll need to rent a room until you find a place to stay?”

Renny winced, then nodded. “I don’t have a lot of cash left, though, so I need to find a job fast. I’m willing to wait tables or babysit or anything in the short term, but eventually, I’ll need to find something more stable.”

Jaeger grinned. “I have a feeling that won’t be a problem, but we can talk about that in the morning. In the meantime, I’m sure Mick won’t mind if you spend a few more hours on his sofa. Right, Mick?”

“Oh, I couldn’t—”

“Fine,” Mick grunted, even as his wolf gave a happy yodel. It loved the idea of keeping the female around as long as possible. In fact, it would be happiest if she moved off the sofa and spent the remainder of the night in their bed, where he could touch and smell her. “In the morning, I’ll take her out to get her car and lead her into town.”

“Tomorrow’s one of my days off, so I can meet her at the gas station and show her around,” Molly volunteered, looking excited at the prospect. “I’ll take her by Mrs. Wilczek’s so she can check into a room, and then we’ll check around town to see if anyone’s hiring right now.”

“Bring her by my office,” Jaeger suggested. “I might have a line on something more suitable than waiting tables or manning a cash register.”

The look of hope that dawned over Renny’s face made Mick’s wolf both happy and angry—happy that the female appeared to be relaxing and starting to believe she had found a safe place to rest, and angry that she’d been through so much before she got here.

“Wow. Thank you all,” she said, her eyes brightening with tears. She blinked to dispel them and offered the room an unsteady smile. “Really. There aren’t enough words to tell you how grateful I am, to all of you. This almost doesn’t seem real.”

Jaeger covered his mouth and yawned hugely. “I find most things don’t at four thirty in the morning, so I suggest we break up this party and all get some sleep. Molly, I’ll see you and Renny in the morning. Late morning,” he said meaningfully. “Zeke, I know you said you didn’t find any sign that the coyotes had stuck around after Mick drove them off, but I’d feel better if you took one last look around before you went home.”

Zeke nodded and headed for the door. His sister paused to give Renny a hug before she picked up her kit to follow. “I’ll meet you at the garage around ten? That should give you time for a couple hours’ sleep before Mick takes you back to your car with a can of gas.”

The she-wolf returned the embrace with a kind of visible relief that made Mick wonder how long it had been since she’d experienced a gesture of real warmth. He’d bet it had been way too long.

“Great. Meeting adjourned.” Jaeger clapped his hand on Mick’s shoulder, then turned to leave. “I’ll see you all tomorrow. Well, later today, anyway.”

There was a brief whirlwind of noise and motion as Mick’s guests all made their way out of the house and into their cars. Then there was a heavy silence as he realized that he and the she-wolf were suddenly alone. Together.

He watched as she shifted her weight and nervously clasped her hands in front of her. Her fingers twisted together as she offered him a tentative smile. “Um, thank you again. Really. I owe you my life. If you hadn’t—”

Mick cut her off. He didn’t want more of her gratitude, and his wolf disliked hearing her sound so submissive. It didn’t suit her. He had the feeling that under normal circumstances, her wolf would give him a hell of a fight, if he managed to get her pissed at him.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, glancing behind her at the blanket still draped over the arm of the sofa. He knew that after being wrapped around her naked body, it would carry her scent strongly. Maybe he should be a gentleman and offer her his bed so that he could spend the night stretched out under it on the sofa, wallowing in her unique, intoxicating fragrance.…

His wolf panted at the thought, which meant it was a bad idea. He turned abruptly for the linen closet. “Let me get you a pillow and a couple more blankets. It still gets cold at night.”

He felt her eyes on him all the way across the room. It did get cold at night, but the way he was feeling, that was a good thing. Blankets would keep his guest cozy, but he could do with a naked roll in a snowbank. Too bad it was already late in the season and the few raggedy puddles of snow were rapidly melting.

Mick wondered if he’d last through a prolonged spring thaw without losing his damned mind. His wolf wondered why he cared. They’d claim the female before long, anyway, no cooldown necessary.

Not.

Our.

Mate.

He used the words like a bludgeon over his wolf’s head, but the beast didn’t even flinch. It just gave him the mental equivalent of a knowing look before settling down to wait him out. The wolf knew that even the human could fight his own instincts for only so long. It could afford to be patient.

Especially considering the value of the prize.